The Interpreter's Dilemma

Aslı had worked as a court interpreter in Ankara for almost a decade, translating testimonies between Turkish and English for foreign witnesses. She had always believed that her job was simple: to repeat exactly what people said, without adding or removing anything. That belief was tested on an ordinary Tuesday morning.

A foreign businessman was testifying in a fraud case. Through Aslı, he told the judge that he had signed the contract without reading it carefully, and that he had trusted his business partner completely. He said that he had never intended to deceive anyone, and that the missing documents had simply been lost during an office move.

As Aslı translated his words, something troubled her. The witness's Turkish partner, sitting across the room, had told her privately during a break that the businessman had actually reviewed every page of the contract himself. If this were true, the witness was lying under oath, and Aslı's translation, however accurate, was helping him do it convincingly.

Aslı reminded herself that an interpreter's role wasn't to judge the truth of a statement, only to convey it faithfully. She had been trained to believe that if she started editing testimonies based on her own suspicions, the entire legal system would lose its reliability. Interpreters, she had learned, were meant to be invisible, transmitting words without leaving their own fingerprints on them.

Still, doubt lingered. She wondered whether staying silent made her complicit in something dishonest, or whether speaking up would violate the neutrality her profession required. During the lunch break, she mentioned the situation to a senior colleague, careful not to reveal exact details. Her colleague told her that he had faced similar dilemmas many times before, and that the answer he had eventually reached was simple: an interpreter reports language, not evidence.

"If you believe someone is lying," her colleague explained, "that suspicion belongs in your mind, not in your translation. The lawyers and the judge are trained to notice inconsistencies. That isn't your responsibility." He added that he had once translated for a witness who later confessed to lying about almost everything, yet nobody had blamed the interpreter, because the interpreter's integrity had never been questioned.

Aslı returned to the courtroom that afternoon feeling slightly reassured, though not entirely at peace. She continued translating exactly what was said, word for word, without softening or sharpening any statement. When the defense lawyer later asked the businessman detailed questions about specific contract clauses, his answers began to contradict what he had claimed earlier. The inconsistencies that Aslı had noticed privately were gradually being revealed publicly, exactly as her colleague had predicted.

By the end of the trial, the judge had noticed the contradictions and had asked for further investigation. Aslı realized that her job hadn't required her to expose the lie herself; the truth had surfaced naturally once every word, honest or dishonest, had been translated with complete accuracy.

That evening, walking home through the quiet streets near Kızılay, Aslı thought about what her colleague had told her. She had learned an important lesson that day: sometimes, doing your job with total integrity, even when it feels uncomfortable, allows the larger system to do its own job properly. She decided that she would remember this case whenever similar doubts arose again in the future.